Rotten to the Corps

By

Bing West

Updated April 30, 2003 12:12 a.m. ET

There is success and then there is huge success. "Jarhead" has enjoyed the second kind: best-seller status, fawning reviews and the "relevance" that only war can bring to a book by a military man. Would it be uncharitable to question whether such success has been deserved? Perhaps. Well, then, let us be uncharitable. The author certainly is.

In the opening pages of "Jarhead" (Scribner, 260 pages, $24), Anthony Swofford says that he repeatedly stole and sold the gear of other Marines, knowing...